The Government opens an aid line of 8 million euros to promote energy communities through consumer cooperatives

The Government, through the departments of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda and Business and Work, has today opened an aid line of 8 million euros for the deployment of energy communities within consumer cooperatives, already whether newly created or already existing. The grants will be managed by the Catalan Energy Institute (ICAEN), and the deadline to apply for them will be 45 days from tomorrow, May 5, 2023.

This line, called SolarCoop, will subsidize, with a maximum of 80,000 euros, the tasks related both to the definition of the management and operation model of the energy community and to the design and creation of assembly spaces, processes and strategic lines and the appropriate legal environment for each project.

Those consumer associations or cooperatives that have included the creation of economic activity in their objectives, preferably in depopulated territories, may opt for these grants. These cooperatives must have as partners natural persons, SMEs, non-profit entities or bodies of the local administration of the municipality; in addition, a majority of the partners must be natural persons, or they must have the support of the town hall where they are established.

The measure aims to stimulate economic activity in the cooperative field and extend the figure of collective self-consumption through energy communities. Energy communities are groups of people, companies or entities and local administrations that promote the installation of renewable energy and/or sustainable mobility and/or energy savings and efficiency to generate or manage their own energy.

In addition to favoring the participation of citizens in the energy model, the generalization of energy communities in the field of the social and cooperative economy must help to boost economic activity in this sector. Based on energy communities, consumer cooperatives can diversify their activity by deploying a portfolio of services associated with renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and sustainable mobility, and thus reverse the benefits of energy renewables in the territory where they are located.

Bet on the empowerment of citizens and participation

The empowerment of people so that they can generate, consume and manage their own energy of renewable origin is one of the objectives of the transition promoted by the Government of Catalonia towards a new cleaner, sustainable, democratic and fair energy model . Energy communities are one of the formulas that must contribute to this transition, since they are a fundamental tool to facilitate the active participation of citizens, small and medium-sized companies and local administration in the field of energy

In this sense, the Government has already approved measures to facilitate and encourage the establishment of energy communities. Thus, it has enabled local energy communities to be declared of strategic territorial interest, so that they have priority in the processing; has simplified the processing of self-consumption installations on roofs; has enabled aid lines for self-consumption systems worth 230 million euros, with resources from the European Next Generation Funds, and has promoted the creation of the Network of Regional Offices for the Energy Transition, which includes other tasks must identify and advise new energy community initiatives.